One of the fun things about Doug Ramsey is imagining someone whose baseline background and standard reactions were entirely weirdness-free having to deal with the assorted nutjob crap that comes with being an X-Mutant and not being quite sure how to handle it.

Characters – Doug Ramsey/The father figure you do NOT want to piss off

As a New Mutant, Doug had met all of the X-Men. Sure, he’d met one or two of themwhilst hanging out with Kitty in his days BM (Before Mutation) there had been a sort of formal introduction using codenames when he and Warlock had been inducted into the team, and he’d been impressed by them.

Rogue spoke cheerily enough (though his newly conscious attention to body language screamed discomfort around strangers, it was odd to see someone who was invulnerable flinch, even minutely)

Storm inspired a sort of awe that he knew the other New Mutants shared.

Nightcrawler had been somewhat disconcerting, what with the blue skin and the yellow eyes… and the fangs… and the pointy tail… and the faint scent of sulphur. However, it was safe to say the sum was a whole lot LESS scary than the sum of the parts, especially when he found out Doug already spoke flawless German… Of course, that mean Doug was already somewhat sick of Kurt popping up next to him with yet ANOTHER German knock-knock joke that no one else would get.

Colossus had been huge and imposing enough when he had merely been Piotr, aka that Russian guy that Kitty had had a serious crush on, but discovering he could turn into an even taller superstrong solid steel form put a whole new slant on potential rivalries, but he had seemed to bear Doug no obvious ill-will.

Wolverine though, had been almost impossible to read, his self-control was so complete that it was actually scarier than the rest of them put together. He had greeted Doug with a firm handshake and a nod… which remained their longest conversation to date. (Roberto had commented later that he’d been impressed Doug had put his hand out to be shaken, Logan tended not to be the tactile sort. Doug admitted he wasn’t sure he’d ever do it again)

A few weeks later Doug was heading towards the computer lab for a study session, balancing an awkward pile of printouts in his arms and a pencil between his teeth. He was a little distracted, picturing a rather vicious software problem to challenge Kitty with, knowing full well she’d have come up with an even nastier hardware problem for him. As such he more or less literally walked into Wolverine turning a corner.

He managed to pull himself back just in time, but the printouts went up in the air and scattered in sitcom fashion.

He stooped to pick them up, and to his surprise, Logan assisted.

“Sorry Mr Logan!”

Logan looked down “You okay kid?”

“Sure Mr Logan”

“Just Logan will do”

“Ummm… if it’s all the same to you, I’ll stick with Mr Logan”

Logan snorted but didn’t pursue the matter. He bent down to pick up another piece of paper.

“So I hear that you and Kitty broke up.”

Well, that was brutally direct…

“Well…. not so much broken up as agreed not to take things any further and stay friends.”

“How you feel about that?”

That was even more brutally direct.. he wasn’t sure quite how to respond.

“Fine?”

“That the truth?”

“What?”

Wolverine cocked an eyebrow at him. “In my experience, when you answer a question like that with a question, you usually ain’t answered the question.”

Doug decided that lying to Wolverine would be a bad, if short, habit to get into.

“The truth? Okay, it SUCKS!”

Where had THAT come from? Still, no point stopping now.

“I wish she had wanted to take things further, I know I did. I put my heart out there and she said no. She was nice about it and all, I guess, but it’s not what anyone who says what I said wants to hear.”

Doug was a little surprised that he’d said all that, but then again, no one else had asked.

“And?”

“And we were good friends before, and we’re good friends now and that makes both of us happy enough. Do I wish we were something more? Sure… but she doesn’t. And if it wouldn’t have made her happy, why would I want to go down that path? And I’m a lucky guy to have Kitty as a friend.”

Logan said nothing for several seconds.

“Good answer“ he said, and walked away.

Leaning against the corridor wall and letting out a long breath to release tension he didn’t even know he’d been feeling, Doug replayed the conversation in his head. He knew Logan was more than slightly protective of Kitty, and wondered what would have happened if he had answered any other way. He had obviously passed a test and had received something akin to a compliment from Wolverine.

It was only MUCH later he wondered about the odds of someone with Wolverine’s assorted super sensitive senses “accidentally” walking into someone like that. He got the feeling it would be a good thing if he pretended that that notion had never occurred to him.